


little monsters

by diana_hawthorne (stsgirlie)



Category: Cracks (2009)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-02
Updated: 2015-12-02
Packaged: 2018-05-04 13:43:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5336201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stsgirlie/pseuds/diana_hawthorne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>We are the Swimming Team, and we are the only ones who matter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	little monsters

once on the team, we rarely  
mixed with the other girls in  
our class or any of the other  
classes. they had become  
boring. they seemed to have  
been washed away, to have  
left the school and vanished.  
even sandra du toit, our head  
girl that year, no longer mattered.  
the swimmers were the only  
ones who did, because they  
were the only ones who  
mattered to miss g.  
-sheila kohler

We are still children in many ways, petulant and insolent and completely wrapped up in ourselves. We cannot see the effects of our actions until it is too late, and is it really our fault? Trapped out here, on this island with no contact with the real world, we grow up running half-wild through the fields, melodramatic with our playacting on the graves (we understand death, at least we think we do – covering each other with flowers as we lay back on the marble sarcophagus).

No, it is not our fault – how can it be? We lack a sense of proportion, as Miss Nievan is so fond of saying. Everything means too much (far too much – life-or-death) or nothing at all, and often it’s the wrong things that matter. We don’t know how to judge the seriousness or levity of anything.

We are bloodthirsty, vicious, prone to surprising acts of violence. When Rosie first came to the school Poppy stole all her shortbreads because Di told her to. The younger girl had burst into tears – it was all her parents could afford to send her off with, as she is on scholarship. Rosie was not the only girl targeted – we were surprisingly democratic about that sort of thing. Laurel’s books were thrown out the window onto the dew-soaked grass below by Lily, who had herself been forced to be Di’s ‘toast-fag’ the previous term for a spot on the team.

But we were meanest to the foreigners – Rosie, from Ireland, suffered, and there were other girls, too, who left, unable to put up with our cruelty. We are proud of our heritage and resent anyone who acts high-handed and arrogant and superior – except us, of course. We are the Swimming Team, and we are the only ones who matter.

• • •

 

And within the team itself, there are divisions. Best friends are formed, broken – romantic friendships, so peculiar to the English, deep and passionate and the most stable relationships we will ever have.

The pairs are:

Di Radfield, the Captain, and Poppy.  
(Poppy is actually in love with Di, but no one realises it – no one except Miss G. And Di only has eyes for her.)

Fuzzie Burls and Lily.  
(This is the most unsatisfactory pair of we three. Lily wants to be one of the ‘big girls’, and tags along with Di and Poppy much of the time – to Poppy’s chagrin. Fuzzie, plump and eager to please, is compliant and accepts Lily’s dalliances.)

Laurel and Rosie.  
(The two youngest girls – it is natural they should drift together – and, indeed, they are simply friends, the best of friends. It will never be anything more or less, but they adore each other unequivocally and without any complications.)

The other girls who try with all their might to get on the team, bribing Di with sweets and presents and even stooping to the vulgarity of pocket-money, never stay for long if they are accepted. We three sets of pairs effectively freeze them out – how can we not? We practise in pairs, eat in pairs, do everything together. Even during the year-long drought we shower together, ten minutes in the tiny cubicles, or we bathe together in the river, the current carrying away our shampoo. There is no room left for anyone.

• • •

 

We sleep together in the same dormitory, decorating it with strips of gauzy fabric (from Miss G), fresh flowers (stolen from the garden, smuggled up under our tunics), candles (pinched from the vestry at the church). The slanted roof of the attic is plastered with our drawings, an attempt to brighten up our institutional living quarters. The rules of the school, however, are evident in the neatness of our nightstands (five things on display, only five), the uniforms heaped carelessly on wooden floors and unmade beds, black shoes tossed by our nightstands. Our books balance precariously in stacks on the floor.

Our dormitory is the largest and most exclusive of the dormitories at the school, featuring long, sloping roofs and airy skylights, overlooking the lake. Miss G secures it for us early on, grouping us all together because she knows, as the other teachers do not, that night-time, when no one else is there, is the most important time to us. She wants us, insofar as possible, to have freedom.

• • •

 

We girls are:

Di Radfield: our Captain. Rich and beautiful and bold, her father killed himself and her mother sent her off to school here, abandoning her while she travels the world. She, more than any one of us, is fearless and true and brave, living out what Miss G teaches us – that desire is the only thing in the world that matters. She is reckless, she is daring, and we are so proud of her. How can we not be? We all want to be Di.

Poppy: almost as rich as Di, her parents died in a fire and she was sent here by well-meaning relations. She has a lovely voice for speaking, and she is Miss Lacey’s favourite. She often calls upon her to recite poetry, particularly Ozymandius. She has grown so proficient at that particular poem (forced upon us as an antidote to arrogance, though of course it does not work) she half-mocks Miss Lacey with every word. After all, how can that wrinkled, shrivelled spinster know what it’s like to be young and beautiful and half-wild with frustration at being here? But more importantly – how can she know that we are better than everyone else – we on the Swimming Team who are the only ones who matter?

Lily: she is a sensualist, Miss G says. Her parents are fairly well-off, but nouveau-riche, and it shows in her clothing and her easy, high-handed manner. She has not yet learned how to behave as though she is entitled to everything, as Di and Poppy have perfected. She is the one, we believe, who will have a First in sex. She kissed the gardener’s boy last summer, and she is the most easily swayed into cracks, with every and any man she sees the object of her adoration.

Fuzzie Burls: the kindest of the six of us, never indulging in the hazing rituals we practise. She is awkwardly plump and confused and eager to please, perhaps because her diplomat parents are never happy with what she does. We all know her parents paid Miss G to put her on the team – ‘Burls-the-Bear’ would never have gotten on by her own merits. But she has a lovely singing voice, and she practices madrigals in the evening, standing by the windows, thrown open to smell the fresh scent of the night.

Laurel: the clever one, her nose always in a book. She devours all sorts of literature, and she is the only one who reads the newspaper Miss Nievan leaves behind after breakfast, its large pages too wide for her to hold by herself. She spreads out the paper on the lawn and uses schoolbooks to hold the corners down, kneeling on the page to absorb every word. She was meant to be a day-girl, but her parents moved away suddenly, leaving her with us.

Rosie: the baby of the team, still fond of horses and playing (more so than the rest of us, at least). She borrows her books from the library, as her parents cannot even afford to purchase her textbooks. She is poor, and ashamed of it – but she is one of us, and we protect her from the would-be taunts of the other girls, reassuring her that she is better than they are.

• • •

 

This is who we are, the Swimming Team. We rule the school, we are the only ones who matter – because we are the only ones who matter to Miss G. The rest of the school might as well not exist... and to us, it doesn’t.

We are the Swimming Team, and we are the only ones who matter.


End file.
